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in my /etc/fstab file my windows drives are mounted as ntfs partitions..
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,umask=000 0 0
i wonder,should i change the filesystem type as ntfs-3g?
what is its advantage or disadvantage over ntfs ???

ntfs-3g is 'filesystem driver' for ntfs file systems, it is very reliable and allows read AND write access to ntfs volumes. If I remember correctly 'ntfs' driver is read only, anyway if you only need read access then stick to 'ntfs', for writing I would only use ntfs-3g.

ntfs-3g is 'filesystem driver' for ntfs file systems, it is very reliable and allows read AND write access to ntfs volumes. If I remember correctly 'ntfs' driver is read only, anyway if you only need read access then stick to 'ntfs', for writing I would only use ntfs-3g.

i can read-write both with just ntfs driver
i have set umask=000
ie all permissions are given for user,group and others

Saying Y or M here enables read support. There is partial, but
safe, write support available. For write support you must also
say Y to "NTFS write support" below.

There are also a number of user-space tools available, called
ntfsprogs. These include ntfsundelete and ntfsresize, that work
without NTFS support enabled in the kernel.

This is a rewrite from scratch of Linux NTFS support and replaced
the old NTFS code starting with Linux 2.5.11. A backport to
the Linux 2.4 kernel series is separately available as a patch
from the project web site.

For more information see <fileocumentation/filesystems/ntfs.txt>
and <http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php>.

To compile this file system support as a module, choose M here: the
module will be called ntfs.

If you are not using Windows NT, 2000, XP or 2003 in addition to
Linux on your computer it is safe to say N.

Safe, but partial support only, and, in the corresponding README file you can see what the limitations are:

Quote:

- This is a complete rewrite of the NTFS driver that used to be in the 2.4 and
earlier kernels. This new driver implements NTFS read support and is
functionally equivalent to the old ntfs driver and it also implements limited
write support. The biggest limitation at present is that files/directories
cannot be created or deleted. See below for the list of write features that
are so far supported. Another limitation is that writing to compressed files
is not implemented at all. Also, neither read nor write access to encrypted
files is so far implemented.

So, in which regards me: no, the ntfs kernel driver has not write support. At most, you can modify existing files. This is from the latest stable kernel, which today is 2.6.27.6

That would definitely explain it. I created a loopback file system into a file on my home, formatter it with ntfs, and mounted it. I wasn't able to create anything on it, though the logs show how it was mounted R/W. So I must assume that you are using ntfs-3g or/and a custom kernel patchset for the ntfs stuff.